In a blog post Monday, Taylor says the book shows how some pieces of conventional wisdom about Wake’s diversity efforts were wrong. Some of his statements may ruffle feathers, particularly those of residents who live inside the Raleigh Beltline who’ve historically been among the most supportive of Wake’s diversity efforts.

“Newcomers to the state — mainly from the Northeast and Midwest — were not less supportive of diversity than whites who, the argument went, having lived in the South for decades had been part of a momentous effort to desegregate schools,” Taylor writes. “Residents of the affluent western suburbs were not diversity’s most energetic opponents; it was individuals who lived in the county’s southern and eastern small towns. There is also evidence to show that urban whites—particularly those who lived inside Raleigh’s ‘Beltline’ — supported the diversity policy because it effectively bused minority children from their communities.

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Among African Americans, those with higher incomes tended to support diversity; poorer residents were considerably more ambivalent. A view among those who lived in southeast Raleigh, for example, was that their children should be educated in their neighborhoods and that their schools deserved the kind of resources and teachers enjoyed by suburban kids.”